This invention relates to a time recorder capable of controlling by a single unit the sophisticated work data even for a place of work where the shift work operations adopting different working hours such as day shift and night shift are being performed.
As is well known, in many conventional ordinary time recorders, a freely sliding card pocket (a slot) is provided in the mechanism of each time recorder. Thus, if a time card is inserted to the card pocket after sliding the pocket to either the "arrival" or "departure" position indicated, the time of day when the card is inserted is printed in either the arrival time column or departure time column of the card. Also, the print line number of the time card is automatically updated every time when the predetermined line switching time elapses in the time records. Also, in some time recorder, regular time start and regular time of end of the work can be preset, and arrival before the regular time of start of work is printed in black color in the arrival time column of the card while an arrival after the regular time of start is printed in red color in the arrival time column in order to distinguish the normal arrival from the late arrival (also the normal departure from early departure). That is, the working hour system containing the time of start and the time end of the work is preset in such equipment, and judgments of normal arrival-departure, coming late-leaving earlier can be made with respect to the acceptance of each time card on the basis of the working hour system, and the results are printed in the time card.
However, though some conventional time recorders are able to preset the working hour system as described above, they can preset with only one kind of working hour system. Thus, if it is required to record the coming late and leaving earlier separately on a card in a place of work where the shift operations are adopted such as early shift from 6:00 to 12:00 and late shift from 12:00 to 20:00 as well as regular shift from 8:00 to 16:00, separate plural time recorders, each preset for a particular working hour system for each shift (work class), must be used.
Also, though the conventional mechanical type time recorder was able to print only the time of arrival and time of departure and to separately print the time of coming late and the time of leaving earlier, more developed type of time recorders seen in recent years have built-in LSI-type data processing equipment such as a microcomputer for performing sophisticated data processing functions in addition to printing the time and distinguishing the coming late and leaving earlier by means of processing of electrical signals. For example, some of the time recorders developed in recent years are able to compute hours of overtime work of early attendance and prolonged attendance by workers, to distinguish the arrival of workers in regular working days from the arrival of workers in nonworking days, to find various kinds of work data such as hours to be deducted in wage calculations by taking account of coming late, leaving earlier and outgoing during working hours, to sequentially print these work data on a time card, to sum and store the work data on a personal file preset for each person in storage (IC memory) in the time recorder, and to electrically process and control the data and system for printing out the tabulated data when necessary.
In these multi-function time recorders stated above, the arithmetic operations for these work data are performed based upon the predetermined working hour system, and this working hour system may include not only the time of start and time of end of work but also nonworking days and early attendance time zones and prolonged attendance time zones required in processing the overtime work.
With respect to these multi-function time recorders, the equipment is very inconvenient if it handles only one kind of working hour system. It is strongly desired that each time recorder is able to preset plural working hour systems and that many workers classified into different work classes (shifts) may need only a single common time recorder.